A few notes about how I've cataloged the following: Directors are labeled under their most commonly known name (example: Aristide Massaccesi will be filed under Joe D'Amato). Films are listed under their most commonly known titles with other common alternate titles in parenthesis (example: City of the Living Dead (aka The Gates of Hell)).

Saturday, July 18, 2009

There's a new blog I'd like to promote, and not just because I'll be contributing to it every now and then. Two of the best bloggers in the 'sphere, Ed Howard of Only the Cinema and Joseph 'Jon' Lanthier of The Powerstrip, are also writing (no doubt better pieces than I could hope to produce) for the blog. What kind of blog you ask? Well, Jon created a blog called Decisions at Sundown (great Budd Boetticher/Randolph Scott movie by the way), a blog dedicated entirely to the Western. I realize that I haven't spent a lot of time talking about this particular genre here on the blog, but the Western is actually my second favorite genre behind Italian horror...so contributing to a blog about Westerns seems like a natural fit -- plus it will force me to become more adamant about watching Westerns, as I haven't made the effort of adding them to my rotation of DVD viewing in quite some time.

So anywho...mosey on over to Decisions at Sundown. Jon already has up a handful of great reviews on some of Anthony Mann's best work. Check it out.

YOUR VIEWS INTRIGUE ME, AND I WISH TO SUBSCRIBE TO YOUR NEWSLETTER

"I suppose I think of film criticism the way I've heard Hebrew scholars describe their approach to the Torah: It's not about discovering dogma, it's about learning to ask meaningful questions, even if you can never fully answer them."

--Jim Emerson

"Style is supposed to express content, dammit--not disguise a lack of it! The meaning of a film is in what these images on the screen (and don't forget the sounds!) do to you while you experience them [...] If you ask me, we should stop seeing style and content as separate entities. In a good film, they're a natural unity."

-- Peet Gelderblom

"Clearly, this does not mean that Friday the 13th is more "valuable" than Jeanne Dielman [...] But, given the great many people who have seen Friday the 13th, where is the intellectual dignity in saying, "it's crap", and being done with it? Anything that has become an iconic part of popular culture is therefore inherently worthy of exploration if not automatic respect [...] If we simply throw it out with the bathwater, on the grounds that it isn't "artistic", we also throw out the possibility of ever finding out."